The Big Book of Wisdom: The ultimate guide for a life well-lived

By Larry Culliford

The Big Book of Wisdom is a guide on how to live a meaningful life, how to grow through adversity towards maturity, and making one’s contribution, little by little, to a better, safer, cleaner, healthier, much happier world.This book on wisdom is BIG not because of its length, but because it is about everything and for everyone.

Combining scientific findings with logical and intuitive reasoning, we are taken on a journey to look into our intellectual and spiritual experiences. Topics such as Capitalism, Education, Religion, Politics, Health, are explored and we look at the imbalance between our aims and values as well as the discovery of intersecting cosmic miracles of existence, life, consciousness, love and unity.

"An important contribution to the revival of wisdom discourse" David Lorimer, Paradigm Explorer

"This book is extremely practical and life-affirming, a must read for anyone on a spiritual journey." Betty Steinhauer, author of In Search of Spiritual Intelligence

"During these uncertain times it offers a genuine tonic and encourages us all to reflect on the bigger picture." The British Journal of Psychiatry

• Language: English
• Publisher: Legend Press
• Release date: Mar 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781789551228

Larry Culliford

Larry Culliford is a skilled physician and psychiatrist who trained in medicine at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and Guy’s Hospital, London. He worked in hospital medicine and general practice in UK, New Zealand and Australia, and later qualified as a psychiatrist, working until retirement in the UK National Health Service. He has now turned his gifted attention to the ailments of society.

Book preview

14.

PART ONE

EXPLANATION

Things You May Want To Know

‘We are already one. But we imagine that we are not.

And what we have to recover is our original unity.

What we have to be is what we are.’

Thomas Merton2

________

2. Thomas Merton (1973) The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, New York: New Directions, p 308.

1

WHAT IS WISDOM AND

WHY DO WE NEED IT

Wisdom is universal. Everyone has some idea what the word means, but it is tricky to describe. Here is a brief working definition for readers to reflect on and play around with:

Wisdom is the knowledge of how to be and behave for the best, for all concerned, in any given situation.

As a form of knowledge, wisdom is different in character from scientific knowledge. Unlike the knowledge of facts, wisdom varies; what works in one situation, at this particular time, and for one person, may fail in other circumstances, at a different time, or for another person. Also, rather than being deduced by reasoned thinking, it is intuitive.

In one way, wisdom is like all true knowledge, in that it can be considered sacred. To be sacred means to be inviolable, beyond personal opinions and preferences. It also means to be full of power. In this sense, wisdom and spirituality are closely related. The search for wisdom can therefore be said to involve an improving degree of spiritual awareness. It is about a person – and, collectively, a community or society – becoming increasingly experienced in life’s problems and how best to resolve them, growing in psychological and spiritual maturity.

Readers may not like to think of themselves as immature. It can feel uncomfortable, a threat to one’s self-image. Nevertheless, it is important to recognise – in oneself and others – the potential for further growth and development. And it helps to realise that this is a process of nature; natural personal, psychological and spiritual evolution; also that, accordingly, it takes time.

Where does wisdom come from? It cannot be said to depend on holding any particular beliefs, whether ideological, political, religious or non-religious. It does depend, though, on having (even briefly or subliminally; that is, just at the rim of consciousness) a profound and mysterious sense of cosmic wholeness. According to such experience, a person feels wonderfully connected to the totality of the universe, to all of nature, and through this to everything and everyone else, to every other person, regardless of age, race, creed, colour, sexual preferences or anything else.

For people who have not yet had this type of exposure, or who remain sceptical about such things, it needs saying that, according to the scheme outlined later (in Chapter 3), everything and everyone – past, present and to come — are seamlessly and timelessly connected through the spiritual dimension of human experience. This indicates that what a person thinks, says and does moment by moment, has an effect – however subtle – on everyone and everything else. Wisdom, then, involves taking mature and continuing responsibility for one’s thoughts, words and actions – equally and importantly, for one’s silences and inaction, for what you avoid saying and do not do. This is maturity. Involving much more than intellectual understanding, wisdom is a vital part of who we are, both individually and collectively; not only of who we are, but also who we can be and are set on becoming.

It also needs saying that people need to be prepared for the idea that growth of this kind, the gaining of wisdom, involves engaging with suffering, with all the different types of pain that any person might encounter: physical, emotional, social and spiritual; from daily minor discomforts to extremes of near-intolerable distress. These pages speak not only of how to suffer less, but also of how to make the most of painful experiences, one’s own and those of others. They assert that the outcome of suffering, when endured and somehow transcended, is wisdom; and this in turn involves having an increasing capacity for living calmly and joyfully, without destructive levels of painful feelings, without giving way to excessive fear, anger or sorrow. However hard won or easily come by, wisdom involves the ability to live contentedly, in an infectious manner that spontaneously informs and influences others, so that everyone benefits.

* * *

Why do we need wisdom? Firstly, everyone needs to seek and attain as great a measure of wisdom as possible for the common good. Being based on the principle of universal human connectedness, wisdom therefore directly invokes virtues like humility, tolerance, restraint, patience, gratitude, generosity, forgiveness, honesty and compassion. These attributes form the basis of social well-being. Because they are among the indicators of supreme mental health, this indicates the second reason: we need wisdom, and do well to seek it, for maximum personal benefit too.

Here is confirmation from Tibetan spiritual master, the Dalai Lama:

I try to promote human compassion based on a sense that all human beings are one. This way of thinking is of immense benefit to me. When I meet someone with two eyes, one nose and so forth, I recognise them as physically, mentally and emotionally the same as me. I feel they are my sister or brother.3

Consider the alternative; that is, people behaving from principally selfish motives, seeking personal gain, intent on avoiding pain and suffering. Words denoting the opposite of wisdom, its absence, are also universally known: ‘craziness’, ‘madness’, ‘stupidity’, ‘foolishness’ or ‘folly’. This kind of reversal and rejection of wisdom may be based either on blameless (but unfortunate) inexperience, or on a particularly regrettable kind of wilful ignorance, a diversion away from or active suppression of the virtues listed above. The consequences of such rejection of wisdom are everywhere, so another reason we need wisdom, and need it urgently, concerns the present state of the world. Quite literally, global affairs are growing too hot for humanity.

* * *

What follows is a necessarily brief, therefore seemingly blunt and brutal account of humanity’s present troubles, doubtlessly already familiar in readers’ minds. The difference here is an overview that demonstrates their inter-locking nature; that they are all attributable in this analysis to a single basic cause, one which is amenable to remedy. This description both offers hope and points to a constructive way forward. In summary, there is a widespread dearth of wisdom, and an associated, unmet hunger for spiritual energy and experience.

This exploration of the current maelstrom of human suffering begins with the huge threat to everyone that is represented by global warming. Little by little, scientists say, the planet is warming up as a result of increasing greenhouse gas emissions, due to both heavy consumption of fossil fuels, and the mounting destruction of rain-forests, which nullifies the protective effects of trees and other vegetation. After a period of denial, which persists in some quarters, this is now given widespread credence, to the extent of a world-wide movement being founded and gaining large numbers of followers. According to the Extinction Rebellion website:

We are facing an unprecedented global emergency. Life on Earth is in crisis: scientists agree we have entered a period of abrupt climate breakdown, and we are in the midst of a mass extinction of our own making.4

But this is only a starting point. Because many aspects of human suffering can be linked to the same set of causes, wisdom involves having very broad vision, seeing connections between things and having a full grasp of their context. Only then is it possible to see clearly how almost all the major problems that worry people intensely are closely inter-related.

Global warming, fuel-burning and eco-destruction are strongly associated with the prevalent science-dominated techno-culture at the heart of which is an immature attitude, a kind of hubris, an excessive and presumptuous self-confidence that was perfectly understandable in the middle years of the last century when astonishing progress in disease control, family planning, transportation, computing and information technology, space exploration and much more, strengthened the idea that the world belonged to humankind to exploit, plunder at will and control.

Alongside the resulting materialist industrialisation and progress came international competition for wealth, territory and resources, accompanied by the polarisation of national populations and other partisan groupings, together with a nuclear ‘arms race’, a ‘space race’, and the development of all manner of terrifyingly powerful military hardware. Division and competition between countries has been fuelled by the need of arms developers to sell their guns, missiles, bombs, fighter planes, drones, military computer systems and so on for maximum profit, thus continuing to tighten the spiral towards ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ and beyond; and all this has ensured so far is that warfare and violence continue with an unprecedented capacity for homicidal annihilation, biological desolation and material devastation. It is as if humankind is going through a troubled and troublesome adolescence, with people tending to blame others for their miseries, and then finding or creating excuses to flex their powerful, new-found military might and muscles. It is hard to avoid feeling anxious about the situation, but wherever there is immaturity, there is also the inherent possibility of ripening to magnificent fruition.

At the personal level, from about the middle 1950s, encouraged by the wider cultural changes, more liberal attitudes, and the feelings of security that prevailed, people in many places began holding increasingly materialist ambitions; such as, to give just two examples, to drive a car and fly in a plane. With the world population stretching inexorably now towards eight thousand million people, the consequences in terms of fossil fuel consumption and atmospheric pollution are obvious. Obviously society cannot do without some form of economic exchange and commerce. This is so even in socialist and communist states. However, in the west, encouraged by profit-seeking industry, by consumerism, by advertising and the relentless imperative of growth economics, we have all been encouraged to desire and go after ever-increasing ‘success’ in terms of profit, property, possessions, position and power over others. This poses a threat, overturning a healthier balance between worldliness and spirituality.

It is perfectly natural and acceptable for people to want things that make life easier and more comfortable. However, there is a downside to such worldly and materialist appetites. They have a strong tendency towards the suppression of more spiritual values, those based on universal feelings of kinship. In the struggle to fulfil our desires, bent on acquiring more and more stuff and status, other people get treated as either supporters or competitors, friends or foe, which fosters a powerful propensity for creating rivals and opponents, real or imagined, threatening our precious status, wealth and well-being. ‘If you’re not a success, you’re a failure... If not with us, you’re against us!’ These immature, intolerant, destructive, die-hard formulae urgently need revision in the interests not only of social harmony but also of human